Hours Count Down In Silent Heartbeats
by Hannahmayski
Summary: When Shisui wakes up, there's another person leaning over him. This person is much younger, about his age. There are bags under his eyes, bruises on all over him, painful rainbows on his skin. His long brown hair is dirty and mattered. Shisui has never seen someone who looks so tired. (Vampire!Shisui) Pt 8 of Fic Title Meme asks (that keep turning into mini fics)
1. Chapter 1

**Fic Title Meme asks (that keep turning into mini fics so they're on here now too)**

 **When Shisui wakes up next, there's another person leaning over him, although this person is not the two Shisui saw the first time. This person is much younger, about his age. There are bags under his eyes, bruises on all over him, painful rainbows on his skin. His long brown hair is dirty and mattered. Shisui has never seen someone who looks so tired.**

 **(Or: that Vampire!Shisui thing that like... one person asked for lmao)**

* * *

Shisui wakes up in a lab, restrained with two men, who Shisui will later learn go by Danzou and Orochimaru, leaning over him talking about things he can't understand and injecting things into him that make him feel like he's burning from the inside out.

When Shisui wakes up next, there's another person leaning over him, although this person is not the two Shisui saw the first time. This person is much younger, about his age. There are bags under his eyes, bruises on all over him, painful rainbows on his skin. His long brown hair is dirty and mattered. Shisui has never seen someone who looks so tired.

But, all Shisui knows is that he's _hungry. Starving_ in a way he's never been before and before he realises what he's doing his teeth are in the person's neck and he's drinking and drinking and he can't stop.

The person pulls him away gently, so, so gently and Shisui chokes on his next breath of air because he's not right. Something is very wrong.

Blearily, Shisui notices the person's blood tastes earthy, dirty, like a forest and he stares at Shisui with big dark eyes and tells him it's alright.

After what could be days, weeks months, Shisui doesn't know. he learns that it's not okay. Not anywhere near okay. Shisui is a vampire and the nameless person in his cell can control plants.

Shisui and the nameless person are those men's experiments.

Shisui has never been good at rolling over and taking the hits that life has to offer so, with the help of the person he's with - who he calls Tenzou - they begin to plan. Shisui's life has never been easy, and there's not that many people that would actually give a shit that Shisui's missing and Tenzou's never had anyone to begin with.

They're not getting saved, so they save themselves.

They're running through the city with no destination in mind when Shisui literally collides with someone's chest. There's a moment of struggling before Tenzou's pulled vines from the ground and they're wrapping around the person and _squeezing._

It takes Shisui's exhausted and terrified mind far too long to realise the person Tenzou is strangling is _Kakashi_ and another moment of frantic yelling to get Tenzou to release him.

Kakashi takes one look at them both - too skinny and Tenzou's hands are shaking and Shisui's been missing for _months,_ Kakashi had thought he was dead - and knows it's _bad._

Kakashi's decision making has never been very reliable and Rin is going to _murder_ him when he gets back, but Kakashi's always liked Shisui more than he should.

The look Shisui's giving him, terrified, panicking and his face is a greying like he's going to pass out, is enough to convince Kakashi that whatever the fallout of this is going to be is worth it. Not to mention the smaller one has taken to hiding behind Shisui, his whole body shaking like a leaf in the breeze. and he grew _plants out of the ground._

Kakashi rubs his neck where the vines were, hugs Shisui harder than he has ever has, and drags the both of them back to his shitty apartment.

(or, Kakashi doesn't really know what he's got himself into, but he loves these two idiots and he lost his last lover, Obito, in a kidnapping case, only for his mutilated body to turn up three years later with the evidence of years of injury and abuse and covered in _bite marks_ and he's not letting that happen again. This time, he'll protect them.)


	2. Chapter 2

It's two years after Obito's body was found, broken and bleeding. Bruises covering almost every inch of his skin and _bite marks._ So many bite marks.

It's been two years, but it might as well have been a day. Kakashi kneels in front of the grave and ignores how his knees dig into the mud, ignores the crushing pressure in his chest that makes it hard to breathe and he ignores the hot tears that roll down his face.

Obito died.

Obito died, with the history of years of abuse on his flesh, an eye missing and Kakashi can't get the image out of his head.

He places the small bowl at the grave of Obito's favourite food and he rests the flowers next to it.

This time it's a little different.

A ring holds the flowers together. A ring that Kakashi had spend hours and hours picking out with Rin because he was going to ask Obito to marry him.

Kakashi was _going to ask Obito to marry him._ He wanted it to be perfect.

Kakashi runs his thumb over the ring and finds he can barely breathe.

Kakashi was going to ask Obito to marry him, then Obito disappeared. And three years later, his body was found. A part of Kakashi wishes they'd never found it, that way Kakashi's memory of him wouldn't be tainted by blood and pain and the endless suffering Obito would've endured.

He chokes back a sob and lets his head fall onto his thighs, bent over double and he _cries._ He cries until his throat is raw, and his legs are stinging with the aftermath of numbness and he never wants to move again.

There's a hand on his back, rubbing slow patient circles – Rin. He runs his fingers along the ring again and thinks how he never got to even ask, how they never even got a _chance._

People had told him that everything happens for a reason, but Kakashi can't believe that. Obito spent his entire life trying to help. The truth is, the world is chaos and violent and it takes and it takes and it takes.

The truth is that life isn't fair and good people die and bad people live.

The truth is that Obito was murdered, and all Kakashi has to show for it is a broken heart.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter summary: Before this, he doesn't know if he was ever truly connected to the plants. He doesn't know if Danzou simply amplified a connection that was already there or if he was just a mere vessel, no special consideration as to why it had to him that he kidnapped and experimented on.  
He supposes it doesn't matter now. Not much matters anymore.**

 **Captivity from your fave tree boy's perspective**

 **(I wrote this in about an hour so if there are errors I a y)**

* * *

Before this, he doesn't know if he was ever truly connected to the plants. He doesn't know if Danzou simply amplified a connection that was already there or if he was just a mere vessel, no special consideration as to why it had to him that he kidnapped and experimented on.

He supposes it doesn't matter now. Not much matters anymore.

His life is chained down to one small cement cell. He can't complain, anything is better than the tank that they grew him in. Anything is better than watching those other little children die slowly, only illuminated by the soft green lights of each tank. He swore, when they died, he could hear their screaming. When their little bodies finally surfaced from the solution they were kept in, he swears he could hear them crying.

A part of him wanted to kick the glass, break just so he could _die._ But he didn't. Or couldn't. Either way, it doesn't really matter.

There are other people in other cells, but Danzou and Orochimaru like him best. They like it when he grows plants from his skin, flowers and vines sprouting from his arms, legs, stomach. They like it when he can grow plants from the ground, despite there being next to no nutrition in the ground.

He wonders what it would be like to have the vines wrap around their necks and _squeeze_ \- he shuts the thought away before it can manifest to anything more substantial.

If he did kill them, then what? He has no name, no memories outside of this lab, nowhere to go. There's no point.

And so he sits in his cell, letting small pink flowers blossom from his bare feet and grow until they're a tangle of tiny vines on the ground. He reaches down and plucks them out of his skin.

He wonders what would happen if he let the vines grow in his stomach, up through his organs, out his throat and his eyes and nose. It would kill him, but then he wouldn't have to worry about Danzou and Orochimaru hurting him ever again. Then he could escape. He could be free.

He doesn't go through with it.

He never does.

* * *

There is another boy in his cell. He is unconscious and he doesn't know what they did to him but he knows it's bad because the boy is flushed and hot. His breathing is coming out in spurts that aren't right. He knows this because the boy who had fungi growing out of his skin had breathed like this the night he died.

He isn't sure why they put the boy in his cell, but he hasn't had company since the other vampire person came and died in his cell.

He sprouts some flowers from the ground and lets them pillow under the boys head. It's difficult to make plants very comfortable, but he reasons it's better than the concrete.

He stares at the boy and wonders what they turned him into. What kind of monster they've created this time.

Maybe that's why they put the boy in his cell - because the boy is dying. And he's been good lately. He's been well behaved. He hasn't attacked either Danzou or Orochimaru in so long. Maybe this a reward. He gets to be with the boy as he dies. He wonders if this boy is a vampire like the last dying person in his cell.

He finds himself reaching forward and his hands rest in the boy's hair. It's clean, and he still has shoes on that are not ruined. He's new. He had a life.

It strikes something inside him, and he cautiously realises it's anger. Taking babies is one thing - he has no memory of another life he could have once had - but taking someone with a _life_ is low even for Danzou and Orochimaru.

He takes a deep breath, steadying himself. It doesn't matter. It's done now.

* * *

When the boy wakes up, he is terrified and starving. He pounces and the boy's hand is around his neck, squeezing uncomfortably tight, but nothing that's bad. He lets the boy sink his teeth into his neck and waits a few moments before he tries to pry the boy away. His blood isn't very nice or useful for anything, Danzou and Orochimaru have tested it already.

The boy looks at him, his face is ashen, eyes blown wide and he's panting.

"It's okay," he says to the boy. He hurt the girl with the wings had said it to the other girl who had both her eyes torn out as she slowly died in her arms. It wasn't okay, but the words helped calm the girl, he hopes it will work in this situation.

He pats the boy's hair carefully and eases him to lay back down on the pillow of roots.

The longer the boy sleeps, the longer he won't have to face his new reality.

* * *

"You need a name," the boy - Shisui says. He's pressed up against the corner of the cell, shivering slightly. Danzou and Orochimaru have never been able to truly perfect making a vampire, and it looks like Shisui is another failed experiment.

He looks at Shisui and frowns. He's never had a name. He doesn't know what it's supposed to sound like, what suits him, even what names there are.

The boy trembles again and grits his teeth. "Tenzou," he says and he nods to himself before he looks back at him. "How about Tenzou? That could be your name?"

He rolls the name on his tongue and wonders why his face feels warm all of a sudden.

"Yeah!" Shisui says. "You like it?"

"Yes," Tenzou says. No one has ever thought about him long enough to try and talk to him, let alone give him a name.

Tenzou decides he likes Shisui.

Shisui rests his head against the wall. "Well, Tenzou. I wonder how long we'll be here."

"Don't think about it," Tenzou says. He's not very good at speaking and the words aren't quite right, but he's the best out the rest of the people here. Tenzou's been here for his whole life. Thinking about that won't get them anywhere.

* * *

Tenzou isn't sure what does it.

If it's Shisui's screams, or if it's the dead, vacant looks of everyone else in the cells.

Shisui had told him he wanted to escape and Tenzou realised so did he. He wanted to escape with Shisui more than anything. He wasn't like the others in the cells. He wasn't dead yet, his soul wasn't dead and he wanted to live. More than anything, he wanted to live with Shisui.

The fourth scream, muffled by the walls still reaches Tenzou's ears and he almost feels the _snap_ in his soul. He stands up, takes a deep breath. The concrete doesn't matter. Nature is a force to be reckoned with and Tenzou has finally been given something to live for.

He's not giving it up. Not now, not ever.

The vines burst from through the concrete. Tenzou closes his eyes, _breathes,_ and the vines tear off every cell door along the hallway. He isn't sure if the others will leave, but Tenzou will give them the opportunity.

He walks out of the cell and his blood is coursing through his veins like nothing he's ever felt before. He's walking out of his cell because he wants to, not because anyone told him too.

He walks down the hallway and lets the vines tear his hell apart.

* * *

Finding Shisui isn't hard and before either of them have a chance to react, Tenzou meets Orochimaru's gaze - the one that put him in that tank, the one who killed those little kids - and he lets the vines tear through his body as though it's paper. Blood splatters the walls behind him and the man's head flops backwards, his body going limp. His eyes are open, unseeing, and mouth is torn open as though in a silent scream.

Tenzou deposits him on the floor and he raises a hand, ready to let the vines that are tearing through the room, upending the important vials and papers, target the other man that ruined his entire life but Shisui beats him to it.

He tears through the restraints and breaks the metal shackles off of his wrists. Danzou has the decency to look scared, Tenzou notes, right before Shisui rips his throat out with his hands.

Suddenly the world is quiet as Tenzou pulls the vines back into the earth and they are left standing in front of the two corpses that nearly destroyed them both.

"We should go," Tenzou whispers, as though speaking too loudly will cause the dead to rise.

Shisui grabs his hand, slimy with blood and they run.

They run for their only chance at freedom.

* * *

 **are Danzou and Orochishitface dead? Probably not, knowing them.**

 **I wasn't going to continue this, but I was replying to old comments and I was struck by a sudden wave of inspiration. I'll probably write another chapter (this time with kakashi looking after shisui and tenzou) but if you have any ideas throw them at me!**

 **Comments are love. Comments are life.**


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